Following the counting of absentee ballots, the Suffolk County Board of Elections has confirmed that Brian Byrnes, who was endorsed by the Democratic and Independence Parties, and William Taylor, who ran as a Democrat, were elected to the East Hampton Town Trustees. The trustees plan a swearing-in ceremony at their first meeting of 2014, on Jan. 14.

    Mr. Byrnes, a longtime East Hampton resident, is the foreman superintendent for the Windmill I, Windmill II, and St. Michael’s affordable senior citizens housing developments. He is also a member of the East Hampton Disabilities Advisory Board and a volunteer at the East Hampton Food Pantry.

    Mr. Taylor, at present the town’s waterways management supervisor, moved to East Hampton in 1989, when he was hired as a harbormaster for the town. He worked on the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan and was active in the implementation of beach-driving regulations and the effort to have local waters designated no-discharge zones by the federal government.

    “I’m looking forward to it,” Mr. Taylor said of his new position. “I hope we can make some progress.” He cited erosion as a complex but vitally important issue for the trustees to address.

    Referring to the construction of a rock revetment on the ocean beach in front of a West End Road residence in East Hampton, a project the trustees recently halted after winning a temporary restraining order in State Supreme Court, Mr. Taylor said that “the Freeholders of the Commonalty of East Hampton have to be able to go to the beach without sitting on rocks.”   

    The East Hampton Town Trustees plan to seek a change in the town code so that anyone breaching a designated “special district,” such as the shellfish sanctuary in Napeague Harbor, is charged with a misdemeanor rather than a simple violation as at present.

    At their last meeting of 2013, on Tuesday, the trustees continued to express frustration over a November incident in which buoys delineating the 8,000-square-foot sanctuary’s perimeter were dragged aside and the bottomland uprooted. The contents of the sanctuary — scallops, bug scallops, oysters, and eelgrass — had vanished by the time John Dunne, director of the town shellfish hatchery, discovered the apparent vandalism on Nov. 15. The hatchery had implemented the project with the consent and assistance of the trustees.

    “The way the code is written, it’s a violation, so you have to be seen to be caught,” Diane McNally, the trustee clerk, told her colleagues.

    John Courtney, trustee attorney, called attention to what he said was a peculiarity in the law. “The penalty is what determines [whether something is] a misdemeanor or not. I’m taken aback here. Why is it that you don’t have to see somebody to be able to charge them with a misdemeanor, and you do to charge them with a violation? The violation is a lesser offense. It doesn’t make any sense.”

    Joe Bloecker, an outgoing trustee, had proposed at the trustees’ last meeting that trespassers caught in a sanctuary have their shellfishing licenses revoked for one year. On Tuesday, he asked to modify that proposal. “This is something we’ve identified, and the people of the town are really upset by this situation,” he said. “Right now, we have public support to do something on this. I made a motion last week and I would be very happy to amend that motion to put ‘misdemeanor’ as well.”

    “I’ve had this problem all year long with poaching oysters,” said Nat Miller, a trustee and bayman. “You call marine patrol and the people leave. This drives me nuts.”

    Debbie Klughers, a trustee, said she had even shown photographs of violators to marine patrol officers, “and they’ve told me, ‘We can’t help you.’ ”

    “I knew this was going to happen,” Mr. Miller said of the scallop sanctuary incident, likening the seeding of the sanctuaries in Napeague and Three Mile Harbors to “filling up a gas tank with a hole in the bottom.”

    Ms. McNally promised to send a memorandum to the town board asking it to amend the shellfish code. “And John and I will meet with the harbormaster to see if we can get an answer to this violation-misdemeanor stuff,” she said.”

    “You’ve really got to catch somebody and make an extreme example of them,” Mr. Miller said, “which we’re trying to do.”

    Also at the meeting, Ms. Klughers informed her colleagues that the Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resiliency Competitive Grant Program is seeking proposals that reduce communities’ vulnerability to storms, sea-level rise, flooding, and erosion through strengthening natural ecosystems. A project to restore eelgrass habitat and coastal dunes will be implemented by the Marine Meadows Initiative of the Suffolk County Cornell Cooperative Extension next year.

    “They want to know if the trustees are interested in being partners with Cornell on the project,” Ms. Klughers said. “They want our support by allowing them to use our properties.” She suggested that the trustees solicit public participation in the project, adding that officials of the grant program would like to deliver a presentation at the trustees’ Jan. 14  meeting. “I think it’s not something we’d want to pass on — to get beach grass and eelgrass planted at no cost.”

    The meeting began with the presentation of a donation to the trustees from Citizens for Access Rights, which advocates for public access to beaches. “This is from the hundreds of CfAR members and our supporters,” said Tim Taylor, the group’s president. “It’s on behalf of our supporters and members that we are proud to present another check for $5,000 to the East Hampton Town Trustees. We would like to thank the trustee board for the positions they’ve taken — they’re not always popular.”

    Mr. Bloecker and Lynn Mendelman did not run for re-election and were attending their final meeting as trustees. “We can’t thank you both enough for the time, energy, and expertise you’ve offered to East Hampton Town for a lot of years,” Ms. McNally said. “It’s very much appreciated by a lot of people, and we’ll miss you.”

    “The last eight years have been a learning experience,” Ms. Mendelman said. “The town I live in — there are so many layers the public can’t see.”

    “Being a trustee has been one of the thrills of my life,” Mr. Bloecker said, “and I appreciate all you fine people and the work you do. I know you’re going to continue it well.”

    Stephanie Forsberg also thanked her colleagues. “But most importantly, I want to thank our clerk for an amazing year,” she said to Ms. McNally. “A very busy year, but your work does not go unnoticed. You put in more hours than anyone will ever give you credit for — except this board. Thank you.”

    Following concern expressed at last month’s meeting of the Springs School Board that not enough parents have been involved in decision making, the board voted unanimously at its meeting on Monday night to reinstate a site-based planning committee, which has been required by the New York State Education Department since 1994. The board also was updated by Thomas Primiano, the district treasurer, about the ways the district is likely to be impacted by the Affordable Care Act.

    John Finello, district superintendent, told the 10 parents and community members in attendance, that the site-based committee would include three administrators, two teachers, two PTA members, two community representatives, one of whom would be from the Latino community, a representative of Project MOST, the after-school program, and the district clerk.

     Eric Casale, the school principal, said a site-based committee had met last during the 2005-6 school year, and Timothy Frazier, a board member, noted that several local districts also had struggled to meet the regulation.

    Mr. Finello said the committee’s focus would be “all-encompassing,” with members having the opportunity to make recommendations “as to changes or courses of action they would like to see accomplished.” Mr. Frazier urged that issues related to limited space and growing enrollment be tackled, among other priorities. The committee, which will meet bimonthly, requires state approval, which Mr. Finello said he hoped to receive “within a few weeks.”

    But some parents wondered whether the committee would truly engender participation. “I encourage the board to have more than one member of the Latino community,” said Donna Sutton, a parent, noting that the school’s Latino population had swelled to more than half. “I urge you not to move forward by continuing to invite the usual suspects, people you know and are already comfortable working with.”

    With regard to health insurance, Mr. Priamiano told the board that beginning in January of 2015, part-time employees who work 30 hours a week (or 130 hours in a given month) will be required to receive coverage paid for by the district. The district now provides health coverage only for full-time employees.

    Teaching assistants, custodians, bus drivers, and other part-time employees are likely to be included, along with their dependents up to the age of 25. Their spouses will not be covered, however. In the coming months, the district will begin an analysis of how many additional part-time employees will qualify for coverage in order to help predict future costs.

    With budget talks looming for the coming year, John Grant, a board member, didn’t mince words: “We need to know the cost to the district.”

    In other topics at the meeting, Mr. Casale presented a monthly update on enrollment, reporting 725 students this month. Board members voted to increase the monthly housing allowance provided to Mr. Finello, who relocated to Springs upon accepting the part-time job as superintendent earlier this year. They had originally budgeted $3,000 a month; the allowance will now be $3,600 to cover utilities as well as rent.

    Frank Perry, an auditor with Rizzi, Schwarz and Taraskas, a Patchogue accounting firm, also presented recent findings. He said the district was in good financial shape, and made no significant recommendations.

    The next school board meeting is to take place on Monday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m.

    When money isn’t an object, you want things exactly the way you want them. No compromises. You want things to be easy. And to run smoothly: no annoyances, no surprises. These are some of the reasons that, according to several agents polled, the current must-have for many Hamptons real estate customers is a new house.

    “New is the new new,” quipped Douglas Elliman’s Patrick McLaughlin, who, as a former TV producer, knows his way around a sound bite.

    “What’s flying out the door is new construction or newly renovated [properties],” said Bruce Pellman, who works in the East Hampton office of Brown Harris Stevens. “People may be calling to see something in Sagaponack, Wainscott, Southampton, it doesn’t matter — they’re more interested in getting a house that doesn’t need work. People don’t want projects.”

    Part of this is a reflection of the area’s being a secondary home market. Summer colonists come out here to play, not get embroiled in hundreds of decisions, from which bathroom tile to which fireplace surround. Today’s roll-off-the-tongue terms in real estate parlance are “move-in condition” and “turnkey,” the latter suggesting that the most labor required is to simply open your door.

    “Of course there are always people looking for bargains or fixer-uppers,” Mr. Pellman said. “But most [buyers] don’t want headaches.” They want to know that the house doesn’t need new faucets or a boiler replacement. And a warranty, which most builders give, is a nice plus.

    Another reason today’s homeowner doesn’t desire a house that’s not right off the presses is an aversion to other people’s dirt. “They don’t want someone else’s kitchen or sink or tub,” said Michael Shaheen, an agent with Douglas Elliman in Southampton. He equates the appeal of a new house to “the new car smell.” It just has that new, never been used, even gently, feel. “What’s selling the quickest and commanding the highest prices are new houses,” he said.

    Even a five-year-old house is considered a bit worn around the edges. For such a property an owner would be smart to give it a look that’s new and improved — not only slap on a fresh coat of paint, but also make any improvements that will make it headache-proof. The work might cost $25,000, but it might fetch $100,000, according to Mr. Shaheen. “It sells quicker and brings in more potential bidders.” For the buyer looking for a new house, the agent can then legitimately claim that the house is “almost new” or “just like new.”

    Another factor is aesthetics. “It’s a new generation,” Mr. Shaheen said. “If you look at what’s being purchased in New York City, condos are very, very hot. People want clean, modern spaces — new construction parallels that sleek, uncluttered look.”

    The days when most buyers were seeking character, charm, and warm and fuzzy are long gone. “Now they want modern and up to date,” said Mr. Pellman. “The builders know this.” Thus, there are a few pockets, such as Old Orchard Lane, off Cedar Street in East Hampton, where contemporary houses with all the trimmings are popping up.

    The current desire to reside in a village, any village, coupled with the desire for a new house has led many owners and builders to fold contemporary interiors inside traditional exteriors. “There’s a lot of renovation going on,” Mr. Pellman said. “Everybody wants to be in a village, but they don’t want to live in an old house. They can take an old house and make it new.”

    Alas, this desire for new is a driving force behind teardowns. “There’s not a lot of land out there,” said Mr. McLaughlin. So the buyer who wants new is forced to property where the house is nothing more than a nuisance. “Something that isn’t necessarily a teardown becomes one,” he said.

    A conservation easement on property near Georgica Cove and the effect of prospective federal flood insurance rate increases on oceanfront properties enlivened discussion at the East Hampton Village Board’s work session last Thursday. Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, explained the issues surrounding the easement and George Yates of the village insurance firm Dayton, Ritz and Osborne updated board members on flood insurance.

    The New York City-based Trust for Public Land holds a conservation easement on a five-plus-acre lot at the intersection of Cove Hollow Farm and Ruxton Roads. The Peconic Land Trust has title to the underlying property. Ms. Molinaro said the Trust for Public Land could no longer meet its obligation to visit the property annually and had offered to donate the easement to the village. Linda Riley, the village attorney, said the board would have to hold a public hearing before  authorizing the easement’s acquisition.

     Barbara Borsack, a village trustee, asked what restrictions were placed on the property. No structures are permitted, Ms. Riley said, and it either must be left in a natural state or used for agriculture. She said the Peconic Land Trust had expressed an interest in letting the property revert to its natural state.

    “Then you wouldn’t have any view,” Ms. Borsack said. “Once it does that, you wouldn’t see anything.” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said that should not deter the board from moving ahead. “I think this would be a nice marriage into properties that somehow are under stewardship, if you will, of the village,” he said. Ms. Riley said hay has been grown on the property, and the land mowed once a year. “You’d probably have more to say about what goes on there if you own the easement than if you don’t,” she said.

    “It’s in our best interest to move ahead,” the mayor said. “We’ll do that by way of the appropriate public hearing, and let the public speak.” The hearing will likely be held next month.

    Mr. Yates provided an update on the National Flood Insurance Program, and predicted sizable premium increases. He reminded board members that coastal properties here had been remapped, including the Main Beach pavilion. “All that oceanfront area is now going to be in . . . the most hazardous flood zone and as a result carries the highest rates,” Mr. Yates told the board.

    “This is part of the reform that happened after Sandy to make the federal flood program sustainable.” He noted that the program is operating with a deficit of approximately $25 billion.

    “Eventually, we’re going to have to have elevation certificates for all those oceanfront properties that are now in more hazardous flood zones,” Mr. Yates said. “Obviously, we can’t elevate all these buildings, so there will be consequences in the fairly near future, probably . . . next November.”

    The Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013, introduced in Congress in October, would impose a four-year delay on implementation of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Law, which was passed in 2012 to stabilize the program’s finances by setting rates to more accurately reflect risk. A vote has not been scheduled on the proposed law.

    “ I fear there will be a gradual, four-year roll-on of these additional rates,” Mr. Yates said. “But there’s no other market than the federal program.”

    Quick thinking, a pair of sharp eyes, a lot of team work, and a boatload of good luck saved the life of a Montauk fisherman whose boat sank off Montauk Point just before sunset Saturday. It was Clinton A. Seyler’s second recent brush with catastrophe: He had been in a serious car accident just 10 days earlier, although no one was hurt.

    Mr. Seyler, a 49-year-old lobsterman, had taken his 37-foot boat from the Landing Marina in Montauk Harbor and was just off the Point when it began to take on water, according to Coast Guard First Chief Jason D. Walter, who said on Monday that the boat went under quickly.

    According to Toni Gray, who describes herself as Mr. Seyler’s “significant other,” Mr. Seyler managed to grab a flotation device as the boat went down. The water was cold, about 47 degrees, with the air about 10 degrees colder.

    Without a life ring, Mr. Seyler would have gone under, as his winter clothing absorbed the cold water, First Chief Walter said. It was then that the first piece of good luck occurred.

    Larry and Carol Blieka are nature enthusiasts who were at the Point to photograph the decorated Montauk Lighthouse. “We were a little early for the lights to be lit, so we went over to the snack bar. My husband is an avid fisherman,” Mrs. Blieka said yesterday. She said his eyes are razor-sharp when it comes to looking out over the water, explaining that he was gazing across the water when he spotted what looked possibly like a person.

    “ ‘Carol, you have to come over with your camera,’ ” Mrs. Blieka said her husband told her. She aimed her Nikon D3100 with its 55-by-300 lens at the small object, which Mr. Blieka, a retired  New York City fire chief, estimated was about a half mile off shore. “I took a picture, magnified it, and it was a person,” Mrs. Blieka said. Mr. Blieka tried to call for help with his cellphone, but it ­wasn’t getting a signal. Instead, they used the phone at the snack bar.

    Lt. Tom Grenci was one of several East Hampton Town police to respond. “I was the first one on the scene,” the lieutenant, who lives in Montauk and knows the roads around the lighthouse well, said on Tuesday. He was on patrol on Montauk Highway near West Lake Drive when the call came in, and his knowledge proved critical. The gate on the dirt road down to Turtle Cove was closed, but the lieutenant knew his way around it. “I pulled into Turtle Cove. I had my binoculars. I could see somebody floating. He was trying to lift his head. I radioed in to dispatch.” The sun was sinking.

    Mr. and Mrs. Blieka continued to watch the floating Mr. Seyler, but the current was quickly carrying him out to sea. She said they lost sight of him as he was carried around the Point.

    This is actually the third time that the sharp-eyed Mr. Blieka has spotted a victim in distress on the water. Several years ago, Mrs. Blieka said, he spotted someone’s boat capsize off Cupsogue Beach; Mr. Blieka took his kayak out and saved him. Then, last year, he was with a friend on the beach in Moriches when he again saw someone in the water and helped save him.

    Mr. Seyler’s run of luck continued. This time, the  Coast Guard’s 47-foot motor lifeboat (47301) was just outside the Star Island station in Montauk Harbor on a training mission when the distress call came in. “Any time we leave the dock, we are always ready for S.A.R. (search and rescue),” Petty Officer First Class Dennis Heard said on Tuesday. “He is really lucky we were in the water,” he said.

    The lifeboat, one of two 47-foot lifeboats at Star Island, dates to the 1990s and is powered by Detroit twin diesel engines, each capable of 430 horsepower. The craft is able to reach a speed of 20 knots, the equivalent of about 23 miles per hour.

    The crew needed that power to reach Mr. Seyler in time: The trip took about 15 to 20 minutes. Mr. Seyler was brought on board as the sun was setting. “It was a couple of hundred yards east of the Point. The victim was suffering from hypothermia,” the first chief said.

    Now a new race began: to save Mr. Seyler from rapidly sinking body temperature. The Coast Guard crew was met back at its base by Montauk Fire Department’s emergency medical technicians. Ms. Gray had been alerted and was also at the scene.

    “I was in the ambulance as they were trying to find a pulse,” she said Tuesday. “The E.M.T. guys were unbelievable. At the end of the day, these guys saved a life. People take them for granted. They were amazing.”

    Still in life-threatening condition, Mr. Seyler was taken to the overlook on the Montauk Highway at Hither Hills State Park, from which he was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital, Lieutenant Grenci reported. There, Mr. Seyler was resuscitated, so much so that he was able to check out of the hospital before the Coast Guard could finish interviewing him. The mission was accomplished. First Chief Walter said they would be in touch with him soon to tie up some loose ends.

    On Tuesday, according to Ms. Gray, Mr. Seyler returned to the hospital as an outpatient. “You have to be very careful with hypothermia,” she said.

    According to an East Hampton Town police accident report released Monday, Mr. Seyler had been driving Ms. Gray’s 2009 Jeep eastbound on Pantigo Road in East Hampton the day before Thanksgiving, with Ms. Gray in the passenger seat, when he lost control of the vehicle. The Jeep left the road, crashing “into a tree and through a fence,” the report says. Neither driver nor passenger were hurt.

    “If he hadn’t been seen by that birdwatcher, nobody would have seen him as he shot past the Point,” First Chief Walter said. “I’m just glad this fellow’s family is celebrating this holiday, instead of suffering,” Mrs. Blieka said yesterday from their Rocky Point home.

    Members of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee were left stunned and confused Monday night following an often tense meeting, eight months after Connecticut developers had presented to them their proposal for the market-rate senior citizen housing complex known as 555 Amagansett.

    During a prolonged inquest, Kieran Brew, the chairman, said both committee members and other residents of the hamlet had created “hysteria” around the proposed development, and sharply questioned East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board’s liaison to the committee, over her approach to the project.

    Last month, the town board’s three outgoing Republicans scheduled Dec. 19 public hearings on the creation of a required new zone and its application to the 79-unit development. Since then, the Suffolk County Planning Commission’s Dec. 4 decision to oppose the zone change has made it almost inconceivable that 555 will be built as proposed. A town board vote of 4 to 1 would be necessary to override the commission’s vote, and the board’s two Democrats, Ms. Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, are against the plan.

    The planning commission, Ms. Overby said Monday night, found the project to be incompatible with the town comprehensive plan, noting that “prime” agricultural soil on the site would not be preserved and that there was a dearth of affordable housing. “The other thing is, [Putnam Bridge, the developer] didn’t have an environmental impact statement done,” she told the advisory committee. “Usually, they have an environmental impact statement by the time they get that far in the process.”

    “Could the town board have voted on this and approved it if there was no [State Environmental Quality Review Act] determination at the Dec. 19 hearing?” Mr. Brew asked.

    “I assume they could have voted for it,” Ms. Overby replied.

    “A SEQRA determination is required by law in order to be approved by the board?” Mr. Brew asked. Yes, was the answer. “So the board wasn’t really going to vote on it that night?”

    “We don’t know,” said Ms. Overby, echoed by several committee members.

    “No,” Mr. Brew protested. “It was very unlikely that this thing would have gone through” at the hearing. He complained that since the Putnam Bridge presentation in April, Ms. Overby had not addressed it with the committee, despite its appearance on the agenda of all but two subsequent monthly meetings.

    “These people came to us in April,” Mr. Brew said. “They put forth a plan, and they said, ‘We want your input. We’re open to change, and we want to talk to you, to the community, and the town board.’ This idea that there was never discourse on it, that it was rushed through at the last minute and was going to get voted on, this hysteria. . . .”

    “We never got to ask questions of them,” said Rona Klopman. Representatives of Putnam Bridge had been expected to attend the committee’s November meeting; their absence bolstered many members’ fears that the town board majority intended to pave the way for their project on Dec. 19.

    But without a SEQRA determination, Mr. Brew said, “they really had no grounds to approve this thing.”

    “So what are you saying?” Ms. Klopman asked.

    “I’m saying that we created this hysteria,” Mr. Brew said. “Everything I read and everybody that I talked to said [the town board] was going to ram this down our throat, when they really were not in a position to do that.” He accused the 555 opponents of “scare tactics.”

    “You had the proposal for the legislation,” Mr. Brew said to Ms. Overby. “All the town board members had it, and every time I brought it up for discussion, you said there was nothing to discuss.”

    The town board “never had that discussion,” Ms. Overby answered — only presentations by Richard Whalen, an attorney representing Putnam Bridge, and the town Planning Department.

    Mr. Brew said that when the committee is confronted with a major proposal such as this, “and the town board has . . . the draft legislation, the proposal to rezone it . . . when we ask for that, we [should] be given it.”

    “It was online!” Ms. Overby exclaimed. “When [the town board] noticed it for public hearing, then the law was online.”

    Mr. Brew continued, charging that Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc had “buried” the proposal, rendering the advisory committee unable to discuss it.

    “How could I bury it?” Ms. Overby asked.

    “Because when I asked for it, you said you didn’t have it.”

    “I had the law the last time we were here, and I went through it,” Ms. Overby replied. Forty or more members of the community attended that meeting  in November.

    “And they were supposed to come to answer questions, and they didn’t,” Ms. Klopman repeated.  

    “We had plenty of information,” Mr. Brew said. “We could have had the discussion without them.”

    Ms. Klopman, a former chairwoman of the committee, then told Mr. Brew that “the chair is supposed to listen and work with the group” and “not be so defiant and angry about something that he feels didn’t go his way.”

    That was a misinterpretation, Mr. Brew said. “My concern is about the process . . . This whole process kept getting kicked down the road, to the point where all of a sudden it’s the last minute.”

    The proposed law was only put online last month, when the town board noticed it for the public hearing, Ms. Overby repeated. “That’s part of the problem,” she said.

    “But you had copies of the proposal for the law,” Mr. Brew insisted.

    “I had copies of the proposal written by Rick Whalen,” the developer’s attorney, said the councilwoman. “I had no copy of the proposal written by my town attorney. I have an attorney — that you guys pay for — and I would have liked my attorney to look it over.”

    Among procedural anomalies, she said, “the Planning Department was looking at the change on this property . . . before we ever had the law that would allow that to even happen.”

    The upshot of the County Planning Commission’s 11-2 vote, Mr. Brew said, was “a barrier that’s going to be almost impossible to overcome. We don’t know what’s going to become of the property, and there are a lot of things that could happen that are not necessarily what most people in this room would want.”

    There are development capabilities on that property, Ms. Overby agreed. “If we want to change the zoning, that is something we can all do as a community.”

    “Kieran, I again want to ask why you’re so incensed,” Jeanne Frankl, a committee member, said. “Here comes a developer who’s . . . looking for their own interest. They come up with a proposal that brings into the picture something we’ve never heard about before. Our town board sets a hearing without ever having discussed it either with the whole board or with the public. Why wouldn’t the ordinary people in the community be very alarmed at this process?”

    A long discussion of alternatives for the 24-acre site ensued, with a combination of affordable housing, commercial uses, freestanding houses, and a horse farm among the possibilities envisioned.

    As the discussion wound down, Mr. Brew repeated his frustration. The 555 project, he said, “deserved discussion that I don’t know we had the opportunity to have.”

    “We’re not recognizing some basic realities,” Ms. Frankl answered. “The only possible reason this was put on for public hearing so quickly was to get it heard by this particular board, and the favoritism of this particular board for big-business ideas in town is too obvious to be denied . . . The ‘hysteria,’ if you want to call it that, goes back some time, and nothing was done to allay those fears.”

    On another matter, the committee voted 9-0, with two abstentions, to advise the town board that it was opposed to a change of zoning for Balasses House, the former antiques shop at the corner of Main Street and Hedges Lane, from limited business overlay to central business. Increased traffic and the danger of setting a precedent, thus encouraging more zone-change applications, were among members’ concerns.

    Mr. Whalen, on behalf of the owners of Balasses House, had sought the committee’s support for the zone change at its meeting last month. On Dec. 19, along with the hearings on 555 Amagansett, the town board has scheduled a hearing on the Balasses House proposal.

     Thirty years ago Judy Lynn-McDowell and her husband, Michael McDowell, who live in Northwest Woods, were advised by the trustees of Mr. McDowell’s mother’s estate to invest in a real estate investment trust, offered by Merrill Lynch. They purchased 35 shares at $1,000 each in “downtrodden waterfront condos” in Southern California that were on the drawing board to be renovated. Alas, they never were.

     “One month I looked at the statement and it was gone. . . . That was it. It went belly up. There was no accountability whatsoever,” said Ms. Lynn-McDowell, who was once a financial trader and now works as a mortgage banker-broker out of her home for Amerifund.

      Her experience with a real estate investment trust is fairly typical (except the part about the disappearing developer). Shares are sold to finance a real estate project or to allow investors to profit from income-producing real estate. According to Wikipedia, the “REIT structure was designed to provide a real estate investment structure similar to the structure mutual funds provide for investment in stocks.” Since commercial real estate provides rent rolls, real estate investment trusts have historically been predominately commercial.

      However, that definition seems to be changing, at least as Simon Harrison, a broker in Sag Harbor, is reinterpreting the concept. Under the assumption that Hamptons real estate is a valuable asset and that wealthy individuals are looking for ways to invest wisely, Mr. Harrison has built six “REIT portfolios.” Rather than purchase shares, investors are invited to buy residential properties. His latest, launched in September, comprises a dozen houses priced from $460,000 to $1 million. An investor can buy all 12 houses as a package for $10 million or each singly. So far five have been sold or are in contract.

     He is not marketing these in a home, sweet home with a picket fence kind of way, but rather as a “mix of equity bets and expansion candidates.” Mr. Harrison said he is “scaling [it] down to a micro level” to allow a “regular person to compete with mega people.” With no emotional attachment to a house, it becomes a commodity, something an investor “can dump easily,” he said. “They’re in it just for profit.”

       To attract buyers, he is using “a rental income approach.” He takes the example of a 9,000-square-foot, $10 million house on two and a half acres. Why buy that, he asks, when you can buy 12 houses totaling 25,000 square feet on 15 acres for the same amount?

       “It’s an automatic diversification of the same amount of money,” he said. “If a leader on Wall Street has $50 million of artwork, $50 million in commercial property, a $25 million apartment, $200 million worth of equities, $600 million of more conservative funds in bonds or treasuries, it’s not out of line to think that a rental portfolio in the Hamptons would be considered.”

       “A lot of people are coming to the same conclusion, that the Hamptons are a solid place to invest,” said Chris Chapin, a broker with Douglas Elliman. “There are big fish moving just below the surface.”

       Mr. Harrison said that people are walking into his office asking for investments. “We just send them the portfolios.”

       What is happening here is part of a larger national trend of marketing residential properties as investments. An article last month in The New York Times reported on an Australian investment trust that has purchased “more than 538 homes, townhouses, and brownstones from Jersey City to Queens and Brooklyn.” And that’s not all. Private equity firms, including the Blackstone Group, have bought “billions of dollars’ worth of single-family homes in some of the areas most affected by the housing collapse.” What these deals have in common with Mr. Harrison’s offerings are that they are offering “steady, dividend-like returns” from rentals.

       In his collateral, Mr. Harrison stresses the attraction of his properties — all in the Sag Harbor area — to prospective renters. The “strong school system” gets high billing. He estimates the year-round rent roll for his latest real estate investment trust at $420,000 per year, about the same amount you could get for renting your $10 million house for the summer. But theoretically, he said, you’ve got a lot more equity with his package.

       But is it an actual real estate investment trust? Michael Braverman, a partner in the now-defunct real estate firm Braverman, Newbold, Brennan, who still dabbles in real estate, understands that “with a REIT you own shares or parts of a bundled financial instrument. I’ve never heard of it being done on such a small scale.” To call Mr. Harrison’s listings a REIT, he feels, is “not accurate. It’s more an informal partnership.”

       But, what’s in a name?

       Mr. Harrison claims that he is “not reinventing the wheel, just bundling properties that meet certain criteria.” He admits that he has “never sold a whole package to someone. . . . For every single one people have come in and cherry-picked individual properties.” Who have his clients been? Mostly financiers — one who works at Merrill Lynch, another at Morgan Stanley — a real estate broker, an architect, an attorney at a financial firm. 

       There is an advantage for the seller too, he said. When a homeowner lists a property with him, he and his agents can sometimes fit it into “a puzzle that forms a larger investment vehicle that acts differently than an individual property.”

       His REITs (call them what you will), he believes, “satisfy varying customer needs for income, equity increases, as well as wealth preservation.” And, he stressed, “If you believe that the Hamptons aren’t going away, then the risk is low.”

       The adoption on Tuesday of a capital improvement plan for East Hampton Airport has fanned fears that the outgoing administration will attempt to answer the controversial question of whether the town should accept new grants from the Federal Aviation Administration by taking federal money before the end of the year.

       Extending the obligations to the F.A.A. that come along with accepting the agency’s money for the airport, in effect for 20 years from each separate airport grant, has been central to arguments over how the town might obtain more control over airport use in order to reduce aircraft noise.

       Aviation interests have asserted that federal money is needed to maintain the airport, and that it would make no difference, while noise control advocates have pointed to different standards that would be applied if the town is “grant obligated” or not, as far as defending the enactment of local restrictions such as a curfew on helicopters.

       In recent weeks, the town’s aviation attorney has advised the town board that, under forthcoming F.A.A. rules, being less beholden to the agency’s oversight may be critical to the ability to enforce noise-control measures.

       The airport capital improvement plan, approved on Tuesday by a split 3-to-2 vote along party lines, includes a list of projects, such as repair of runway and taxiway pavement, runway lighting, and the construction of a perimeter and security fence, with an estimated total cost of approximately $5 million. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and fellow Republican majority members, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who are leaving office at the end of the month, voted in favor of it.

       An additional approximately $5 million worth of projects was removed from an earlier draft of the capital plan after a hearing last month, when it was determined that only projects already included in the town’s airport layout and master plans, for which a general environmental impact evaluation has been done, could properly be listed on the capital improvement plan.

       Those projects that were removed have been listed on an airport maintenance plan presented to the town board this week by Jim Brundige, the airport manager. Both lists, Mr. Brundige said, are key to helping town officials develop a roadmap for airport upkeep and repair. No major capital improvements have been made to the airport during his nine-year tenure with the town, Mr. Brundige said.

       According to the resolution approved Tuesday by the board, the capital plan will be submitted to the F.A.A.

       A previous board, in 2011, unani mously approved the submission to the F.A.A. of a request for money for an airport fence design, which has been pending.

       The agency had indicated it was willing to fund the fence project, but wanted the town to commit to constructing the fence before it would pay for its design.

       In October, Councilman Stanzione offered a resolution stating the town’s commitment to completing the fencing project, with or without money from the F.A.A. He has made no secret of his opinion that new F.A.A. grants should be accepted and has accused those opposing accepting them of wanting to shut down the airport.

       That October commitment could have set the federal agency’s wheels in motion for issuing a grant to the town.

       “It is definitely a possibility,” said John Jilnicki, the town attorney, yesterday. “I don’t know, frankly, if it’s a reality, but it’s a possibility.”

       However, he said of the F.A.A., “I have heard nothing from them at all.” In past years, Mr. Jilnicki said, F.A.A. officials, “aware of the fact that the town board changes its composition every few years,” have held off on decisions affecting the town when a new administration is poised to take office.

       Another factor, he said, may be the availability of money. The F.A.A. has a finite amount of airport improvement grant money for each calendar year, and may have exhausted the coffers for 2013.

       “I would like some assurance,” that the board does not at present intend to pursue F.A.A. funding, Kathy Cunningham, president of the Quiet Skies Coalition, told the town board on Tuesday, before the airport capital plan was adopted.

       “This is a roadmap for projects that might be done in the future, and might not be done,” said Councilwoman Quigley. “I don’t know how to make it more clear that all we’re doing is approving a roadmap. There’s nothing about funding here,” she said.

       On Tuesday afternoon after the vote, the East Hampton Aviation Association issued a press release thanking the board and in particular Mr. Stanzione for adopting the “repair plan.”

       “Next year, the town can decide whether it wants to pay for the repairs itself or apply to the F.A.A. for the funds to do so,” the organization wrote.

       Anyone living in East Hampton for any length of time probably drives right past the big blue gas ball on Railroad Avenue and Fresno Place in East Hampton Village without batting an eye.

       Until now. Recent passers-by have no doubt noticed the huge National Grid crane at the site and the fact that the sky blue steel ball, which is also known as a Hortonsphere, is missing its top half and more accurately resembles a hemisphere.

       According to Wendy Ladd, a spokeswoman for National Grid, the gas ball, which was used to help maintain pressure in natural gas lines, was decommissioned about six weeks ago and will be just a memory by the end of the year.

       “As far as we know, it’s the last one on Long Island,” she said.

       Although not much of a fuss has been made about the gas ball’s demise, at least one resident, David Collins, is sad to see it go.

       Mr. Collins said when he heard the gas ball was going to be removed, he asked the village board to consider preserving it as a historic landmark, but to no avail.

       “To me, it’s industrial architecture,” he said. “So is the Hook Mill. The Hook Mill was not built to be a historic monument. What time period does the village want to preserve? If it’s not made out of wood, they aren’t interested.”

       Mr. Collins said the gas ball was hand-riveted by teams of workers in the days before welding was a common construction practice and built to last.

       “It kind of breaks my heart to see it go,” he said.

       A larger gas ball on the Sag Harbor waterfront was disassembled in 2006, much to the consternation of many residents who had come to view the structure as a fixture on the village skyline.

       The East Hampton gas ball, which was built in 1928, became obsolete with the expansion of natural gas lines on the East End and the construction of updated regulating equipment.

       During periods of low demand, natural gas was pumped into the ball and held under pressure until it was released during periods of high demand.

       The tank was constructed of threequarter-inch-thick steel panels that were riveted together. Workers are using acetylene torches to cut the panels, which will be removed from the site and recycled.

       The name Hortonsphere is a trademark held by the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, which manufactures all sorts of energy-production infrastructure and is named after one of the company’s founders, Horace Ebenezer Horton.